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In the Trump era, it’s ‘ladies only’ as Democratic voters are choosing women over men

WASHINGTON — Jennifer Arrow, a stay-at-home mother in Culver City, California, has a new voting rule for herself: “Ladies Only.”

She wouldn’t vote for a Republican woman over a Democratic man. But in a race featuring two qualified Democrats, say a judge election or a presidential primary, she’s done with picking a man over a woman.

Jennifer Arrow, 41, of Culver City, California, with her daughter Athena, 1, at a Washington, D.C. march against President Donald Trump's family separation policy this year. Arrow says she is done choosing Democratic men over Democratic women. (Submitted photo)

Arrow, 41, is married to a man, and loves her dad and her brothers, and her comfortable life used to give her little motivation to “fight the patriarchy.” But then, she said, a “monster” was elected president because a majority of men supported him.

For the first time, she feels anger and apprehension toward men as a group. She is now willing to be “explicitly sexist” when she casts her ballots.

“You made Donald Trump the president of the United States. Go to hell,” Arrow said Thursday. “I’m livid. All the time. And that’s I think a lot of women’s opinions on politics. Just like: we don’t trust you anymore.”

The results of Democratic primaries so far this year suggest Arrow is not alone. Though there is no evidence of widespread man-boycotting, many party voters, women and men both, appear to be making a concerted effort to choose women.

Women have succeeded in Democratic races at a remarkable rate. As of Tuesday, female candidates had won 66 per cent (70 of 106) of Democratic House primaries in which there was a man, a woman and no incumbent, according to analyst Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Dittmar noted that Democratic women are still not at 50 per cent parity. And she said the numbers are likely to get less rosy in the general election, in which many women who won primaries will face tough races against Republican incumbents.

But something is happening.

“Democratic voters and a growing share of independents are hungry to elect the opposite of what they see from Trump-controlled Washington, and there is nothing more opposite than electing women, especially younger women and women of colour,” said Jesse Ferguson, a former top spokesperson for Clinton’s campaign and former senior official at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Democratic strategists and pollsters attribute the surge by Democratic women to a variety of factors, all of them Trump-related.

Anger with Trump himself. A desire to avenge the defeat of Hillary Clinton. Democratic voters’ focus on health care, an issue on which voters have traditionally seen women as adept. The #MeToo movement. The predominance of women in the grassroots “resistance” groups that have sprung up to oppose Trump, many of which emerged out of the post-inauguration women’s marches. And the simple fact that more Democratic women have signed up to run this year than ever before.

The Democratic trend continued in Tuesday primaries in Georgia. Gun-control activist Lucy McBath, a Black woman who entered public life after the murder of her son, defeated a businessman. University professor Carolyn Bourdeaux defeated another businessman.

Their wins followed the biggest primary upset of the year so far, in New York City in June, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina activist, unseated incumbent Joe Crowley.

The movement toward women may affect the party’s choice of a presidential nominee. Several women, possibly including senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, are expected to run against several men.

“I hope a woman runs again in 2020. She will likely get my support,” said John Totels, a retired information technology project manager in Maryland.

Totels, a white man in his 70s, tweeted last week to call for votes for candidates who don’t look like him. (“We had our shot for too long.”) He said he had been stunned and changed by Clinton’s defeat.

“That's when I became more aware of white privilege and decided to concentrate on electing women and people of colour in the local elections,” he said.

The triumph of female candidates in Democratic primaries has come as female voters of all kinds appear poised to overwhelmingly pick Democrats of all kinds in the general election. In a Quinnipiac poll released this week, women preferred Democrats by a margin of 57 per cent to 32 per cent, while men preferred Republicans 46 per cent to 44 per cent.

Polls suggest candidate gender is much more relevant to Democratic voters than Republican voters. In June, 87 per cent of Democratic voters said the country would be better off with more women in office. Among Republicans, that number was 49 per cent. Republican women are not winning their primaries at nearly the same rate as Democrats: they’ve prevailed in just 38 per cent of no-incumbent races with a woman and a man, according to Wasserman, and just 17 per cent of all races without an incumbent, according to Dittmar.

Connie Nance, 71, retired from a career as a military civil servant, voted in a Democratic primary in Fredericksburg, Virginia in June. She chose a Black woman, strategic planner Vangie Williams, over two male military veterans. Williams won.

Nance, an independent, said she has become more inclined to pick women because of the high calibre of the women now running: “It’s the qualifications of the women. What they’re saying. How they are conducting themselves.” She said, in future primaries, “I could vote for a man, but boy, he’d have to be pretty outstanding.”

“The men have controlled everything for so long. And look at how well it works now. Hello! So maybe it’s time we can balance those scales of justice — social justice,” she said.

Daniel Dale is the Star's Washington bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @ddale8

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